I drive an older car, a 1998 Toyota Camry that we call Bernard. Once you name a car, it’s hard to let it go.

Bernard has some cracks in his leather upholstery. Two of his radio preset buttons are missing, like punched-out teeth. There’s a talking McDonald’s Happy Meal toy under the driver’s seat, and every time I hit a pothole the toy chirps, “You got THAT right!”

Bernard has 133,000 miles on his odometer, but his 6-cylinder engine is strong and reliable. In 11 years on the road, he has never left our family stranded.

Still, if Bernard’s pistons froze tomorrow, I would not be without transportation. We have a second car, and I would probably replace Bernard within a couple of days.

Most middle-class Americans consider car keys a birthright. It’s also a fact that many Americans are one auto breakdown removed from joblessness.

Last week, I spent some time talking to Peggy Voss, a 38-year-old, divorced mother of five who lives in rural Coffee County, Tenn. Ms. Voss was here visiting her 14-year-old son, who lives at Chambliss Shelter in Brainerd.

Ms. Voss doesn’t have a working car. A caseworker drives her to the shelter a couple of times a month to visit her son, who was sent to the center by a judge for infractions at school.

“Life circumstances have hit me hard,” said Ms. Voss, who is unemployed and lives with relatives near Tullahoma. “And I need to get back up.”

Without a car, it’s hard to look for a job, Ms. Voss said. Her 1990 Acura Legend “blew up” and left her family stranded. “We figured it was too expensive to fix,” she said.

In Orlando, Fla., where she lived before, she walked to her job as a kitchen worker at Barnhill’s Buffet. Now, she says she lives too far from the main roads in her Middle Tennessee community to walk to work.

“I don’t mind walking,” she said. “But it would take me two hours to walk to work from where I live now.”

Still, she said living with relatives forever is not an option either.

“I need to get my own place. I need to get my life in order,” she said. “My kids need their own space. Everybody needs a place to breathe.”

To Ms. Voss, the path is simple. Find a car. Land a job. Get an apartment.

“At this point, I would take any car that was given to me,” she said. “I want to get my life in order, and I need a vehicle to do that.”

In the meantime, Ms. Voss said she stays close to home and reads the Bible a lot.

The people at Chambliss Home say Ms. Voss will probably not get her son back until she finds stable work and a place for the family to live.

“If I had a little apartment and a place for my kids to lay their heads, I would be in heaven,” she said.

For the moment, though, she’s stuck in neutral.